


if you were church, i'd get on my knees

by aryaflint



Series: in hearts at peace [2]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Oral Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 16:39:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14898167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryaflint/pseuds/aryaflint
Summary: She was better than the whiskey and the smoke, better than prayer or a pack of cigarettes, better than anything else in the whole wide world, at keeping that mess out of his head.





	if you were church, i'd get on my knees

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello! consider this an outtake from in hearts at peace, of which it was meant to be a part until i decided i wanted to write the whole thing from brigid's point of view. i could never say enough how much it means to me that people enjoyed that series, and so i wanted to share a little bit more.
> 
> title is from the song "church" by fall out boy, aka the best song on their new album
> 
> but you don't have to have read in hearts at peace to understand this one-shot, so i hope you like this one :)

Tommy had spent too much time in those bloody tunnels, suffocating in the dank air and drowning in the wretched French mud.

There were nights when he startled awake, clawing at his throat, gasping, kicking as if to swim up for air, and for a long while, it didn’t matter how fast or hard he blinked, because his vision was tunnel-black regardless. Those were the nights when he couldn’t even begin to tell what was real and what was not – whether the light rain on the window panes was the scratching of German shovels, whether the distant factory clamor was the echo of artillery fire, whether it was his own breathing he heard or the restless panting of an enemy soldier through an inch of dirt.

Those were the nights when the Germans came, those old ghosts, when he’d lie there, frozen with fear, and hope for a reprieve, for absolution. He’d hope for some decent fucking sleep.

It didn’t seem to matter how much of his sanity and soul he gave, the War was greedy, hungry, and it wasn’t done taking from him.

But Brigid –

(She was soft and warm and _his_ , and she was the only thing that seemed to matter, truly _matter_ , anymore. She’d forced her way back into his life and his bed, words certain, those green eyes blazing, even when he’d done everything to push her away, and for that, he’d be forever in her debt, because she made his borrowed time feel a lot like a real life again –)

Brigid was better than the whiskey and the smoke, better than prayer or a pack of cigarettes, better than anything else in the whole wide world, at keeping that mess out of his head.

On the nights when he startled awake without alerting her, he would just stare, focus on his breathing as he took her in. Curled next to him, her moonlit lips curved up in an almost-smile, she was all soft skin and tangled curls, and Tommy had spent so much time staring at that photograph – tracing across the gentle slopes of her rouged cheeks, her nose, her mischievous smile – that he’d forgotten what she was like when she was warm and breathing and alive. She could have been a dream, one of those cruel ones that had plagued him in France, when she’d grin and laugh like she had when he first started trying to charm her, and Tommy’s heart would ache with the keen feeling of loss when he woke up.

But it didn’t matter how muddled the rest of his life had become, because Tommy had known she was real from the very first night she joined him in bed – there’d never been anything as sweet as her in France.

On the nights when he couldn’t claw his way out of his dreams, it was her small hands that pulled him up, her fingers and lips both trembling as she held him close, whispering nonsense, while he tried to forget the woolen scratch of the arm tightening around his neck, the burning of a hot bullet through his chest, the impenetrable pressure of the mud as it sank in around him. She would pull his hands from his throat and entwine their fingers together, and fuck, Tommy had thought he’d never hold her hands again.

He quickly figured out she was about the only thing that could help him forget.

So, when it all got to be too much – the picking, the screaming, the fucking _shovels_ – he would bury his face between her thighs.

He hadn’t even been thinking the first time, his face still wet with hot, panicked tears, shame and rage curdling in his chest because he couldn’t even _sleep_ right anymore, for fuck’s sake, and so he’d kissed her.

It was hard, and insistent, and hot, nothing like the happy one they’d shared weeks prior on the train station that had tasted like her tears and the hint of promise. This kiss was almost foreign, like a long-forgotten memory, and she’d gasped into his mouth, her hands exploring him with a girl’s apprehension. His bare shoulders, his close-cropped hair, his scar and his spine – she traced it all, bringing him to life with every inch. And as heat and desire curled low in his stomach, Tommy had touched her too – _really_ touched her, for the first time in years – protected from the awkwardness and timidity of civilian life by a locked bedroom door. 

There was the familiar – her long curls, the soft line of her jaw, the way she would gasp when he nipped at her neck and press herself closer – and the unfamiliar, too – the cut of her ribs, laid bare by years of careful rationing, and the new calluses on her hands from all the sewing. But familiar or not, she had been shivering under his fingers, and Tommy just needed something to remind him what it was all _for_ , so he’d pushed her back against the pillows, pushed her long nightgown up around her waist, and pushed those intrusive, paralyzing thoughts back down into the blasted tunnels.

Gasping and trembling in his bed, she’d twisted a hand into the sheets beside her, while the other found its way to her mouth to muffle herself – another thing that hadn’t changed. Brigid Murphy was never quiet, those full lips always ready with a quip or retort, too easily parted for a sigh and moan when his lips or hands would venture below her waist.

It had been almost too easy, drawing out that hitched gasp, when he settled between her thighs for the first time in over two years. She was already dripping by the time he slipped a long, callused finger inside her; trembling and panting when a second joined the first; pleading through her fingers when he suckled that sensitive bundle of nerves. The hand that had been in the sheets found his hair, her nails sharp against his scalp, to hold him closer, and she tasted like heaven. He had to settle a hand against her navel to hold her down, even as her legs found a home over his shoulders, even as her back arched and fell as if she were a marionette with its strings cut.

The moon, high in the night sky outside, glowed on her skin, illuminated her with an almost-silver halo around those dark curls and flushed cheeks, and even though she looked like an angel, it was _his_ name that she was whispering over and over and over like a prayer. And when she’d peaked, her thighs tight around his ears, the only thing he could hear was that familiar high-pitched cry, the one he’d imagined so many times in France when he’d turn over in his bunk and slip a hand down his trousers.

And he couldn't hear the shovels anymore.

When she relaxed with a quivering sigh, one leg slipping off his shoulder, Tommy came in his pants like he was fifteen and touching a girl for the first time.

Her voice had been thick, her breathing still heavy, when she whispered, “What was all that for?” 

Looking up, he found her chest and cheeks flushed, the neck of her nightgown slipping down to reveal the sharp cut of her collarbone, and around the rush of blood in his ears, Tommy was left to wonder at it. How many hours had he spent curled up with her photo, staring at her collarbone peaking out from underneath her dark curls and remembering how she would shiver when he kissed her there? 

So he’d kissed her there for the first time in over two years, and she shivered like she always did, and the only clumsy words he could string together were, “Thank you.”

“What for?” she murmured, big eyes soft, trembling hands wandering up to his hair.

“For being here.”

_For being real._

Tommy had fallen asleep with her fingers in his hair and didn’t wake up again until the sunlight was streaming in through his thin curtains, until she stirred to life beside him with a contented sigh. And with his heart in his throat, he realized how glad he was that she was still there, that she hadn’t slipped away, ephemeral-like, in the dead of the night.

In the hard light of day, it had all felt like a dream.


End file.
